I’ll say when I smell the water from my soil if I make a compost tea smells like fresh beets exactly. It’s definitely near 8 for sure. I trust my natural pH sense here now that I’m learning how to apply my overdeveloped sense of taste and smell with a 0.3 accuracy window. With a little training let’s see if I can’t get better LoL. Gotta nurture any special skills I have if it helps me here for sure
I can try to get some builders sand tomorrow.
Dumb question though: wouldn’t adding sulfuric acid directly in the soil work faster than sulfur that has to be broken down into it to lower pH? Maybe I just don’t understand why we can’t dilute and mix it with the soil or if it comes in dry form why not amend it in like Bone meal?
I do have some organic flaxseed meal I found in my pantry. IDK if I can use it for an amendment, but from my research it seems to be 5% nitrogen and people seem to say it’s the same as using cottonseed meal. It seems I don’t have enough to make any difference though as I have a small pouch of it about 8" tall
Here’s today’s pics. Still don’t have to water. The center of the pot is retaining water 1cm down still.
Despite it all growth has picked up nicely
Overhead shots
Hygrometer
Humidity is a bit low, but I’m definitely seeing improvement after adding humidity.
I might be able to grab some vermicompost from the worm bin at home tomorrow to add to the mix if that’s suggested by anyone. Depending on the compost situation out back i may have some leaf mold to add too, but I’m not expecting much out of the black bin TBH without having seen it in over a year personally.
I’ll do my best to grab some sand tomorrow and then I can mix my new and improved soil. If it works as well as I hope I’ll see some better growth rates and hopefully less deficiency issues as they struggle to get through the soil like now.
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OMG I’m a dumbass 
I scrolled up. The silt settled at the 6oz line last night. The clay is only at 4mm like the sand. This is a almost pure silt soil:man_facepalming:t2:
Game plan?
New ratios with proper math after I caught my mistake:
79% silt
10.5% sand
10.5% clay
That says I have silt loam/silt borderline RN without doing anything and that’s still way too much silt to anything else ratio. Also with the clay that stayed suspended in the water trapped I’m wondering if sand alone might fix this ratio
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Any organic sulfur applications are slow release. Don’t add anymore compost, vermicompost or otherwise as your loam is already too much. Just try sand for now.
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Ammonium sulfate is quickest but not organic. Adding peat moss will acidity pretty quick too
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Grass Hopper!
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I had meant the suluric acid for you. If sulfur is slow acting as it has to be broken down into sulfuric acid before it changes pH at all or becomes available to the plants wouldn’t adding it directly/diluted do anything faster?
Wow I had forgotten about that post last night. Been dealing with neck issues all day yesterday. I got crazy high to not scream or go to the urgent Care.
I had heard leaf mold adds aeration as well as organic material for the microbiology to break down…and break down into silt🤦🏻♂️ I just saw it as I was typing.
What about vermicompost? Wouldn’t adding a small amount of it help with the microbiology in the soil or is that not a concern? I want to learn more about this subject now. While my life’s passion is cannabis and trying to breed that one strain that just works for all my shit I have to deal with, ATM it’s swung towards the soil where I can help my plants help me. Better soil=better crops. That’s obvious even to a idiot in my circle and I know some pretty dim people. Good people, just not too bright getting confused at basic tasks.
I’ve had a few over the years that did it, but usually they do it by tranquilizing me. Calming sure, but what if I want to feel better and go out that day? Solution usually a sativa leaning hybrid with Berry, woody, caryophyllene, citrus, decent skunk content, a noticable amount of eucalyptol, chocolate, and a coconut note if that exists. It sounds like I described a Samoa 
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Did you mean because she finally starting stretching? I just woke up and comprehension is low
It was about burning my arm. It was a 3rd degree looking burn, but now it’s just a healing scab. I peeled off the skin around the area and it’ll either be a scar or just heal now. I just peel off bad scars now. No idea why they can be scratched off now and why they couldn’t for my whole life until a few years ago.
It’s not in pain or stinging at least
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I have to credit @MomOnTheRun as I learned the sulfur stuff from her.
Sulfuric acid that sounds gnarly and Not like something I would want to touch or put on my plants lol. You’ll shoot your eye out kid.
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Oh, and vermicompost is just compost made from worms aka loam aka worm castings aka not the sand you need right now lol
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Maybe I’m remembering the chemical name wrong, but the reason sulfur takes so long is the microbes have to break it down into a different form. I was wondering if there’s a way to add that form directly if it’s needed to balance pH fast. I know aluminum sulfate I believe is the inorganic chemical that is fast acting, but that’s not what sulfur breaks down into
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Using a potassium silicate ph down is the only way to quickly drop ph that I know of. The problem is it tends to add too much potassium than the microbiology can handle leading to a higher chance of lock out with salt building up a lot faster than just topdressing letting the micro biology take care of it…this is why organics doesn’t mix with “bottle” feeding 
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Growth is much better now. No burnt tips or growth issues visible to me. A nice good green and the 2nd set is getting a little darker after it got it’s 2nd and 3rd fingers. One side didn’t split off correctly and just has 2 fingers, but the 3rd set looks really good. 3 fingers out the bat.
The cilantro is absolutely loving this LITFA. I just keep the Rh around 50% only dropping to 40% when i had another fan going.
6 wasn’t able to get any sand yet. How much should I try to get to mix in with the soil? Just enough to fill the fabric pots with the correct ratio or enough to mix in all of my soil?
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Have you ever tried one if the gypsum and sulfur amendments for a fast acting pH down? I keep seeing all the fast acting ones for hydrangeas are just a mix of gypsum and sulfur. Nothing else and they say it’s not something you have to wait months for. They get asked a question about how long it takes and the company all seem to say the same thing that it’s not the same as elemental sulfur. Something about the gypsum helping speed things up in the microbiology side or something.
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Well then🙂 growth is picking up the pace
IDK if it’s obvious in the picture, but in just a couple of hours the 4th set started to poke out and the 3rd set got slightly bigger and hairier.
Does anyone have any input on if I should mist the soil on top at all now that I know that I’m dealing with silty soil leaning on the silty loam side? I’m not going to water this go round until they start to show underwatering symptoms. I’ll make note of that time and use it as a general guideline for what I should expect out of that pot. Plus growth is showing me whatever I did last gave them the right levels of calcium and magnesium. I’ll have to scroll up, but last watering I don’t believe I added anything to the water outside of some molasses.
On that note I have a question about molasses. Is there something about sulfured molasses that’s bad? I had a thought that if you have alkaline soil you could add some sulfured molasses to help the microbiology and pH in one go. Maybe idk what I’m talking about and it doesn’t work that way because there’s something about sulfured molasses I’m just not aware of. Ignorance is not bliss. Ignorance is torture as knowing something is better than fantasy every time. Nature is absolutely fascinating and sometimes as strange as fiction.
I got my answer. I forget my elementary School lessons too frequently now. Sulfur dioxide is the main constituent of acid rain. Too bad it was just a pipe dream. It makes me wonder if there’s a potential for there to be some way to isolate a source of sulfur and the bacteria that eat it and break it down and possibly create some organic additive that will break down in the soil quickly making the sulfuric acid available in less than a year? From what I’ve been reading the 80% gypsum and 20% sulfur soil amendments seem to do that, but IDK why. I can only guess it’s possible that it has to do with the calcium in gypsum making the sulfur molecules extremely more available to the bacteria than elemental sulfur is as it might be isolated, but it’s still enough to create something we can hold. An isolated molecule could possibly react with the chemistry more easily if the bacteria don’t do anything with it.
I wish I had a better school. I never had a chemistry class and my science class was a joke. Good thing the internet exists 
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I found some clover growing outside and brought it into the pot. If it roots awesome. If not it’ll feed the soil.
I gutted a aloe vera plant my mom gave me and put it in a jar. I put a small amount of it with the clover separate from the rest of the soil. That spot dries too fast while the rest of the pot remained somewhat moist.
I’m grabbing 50lbs of sand tomorrow. That should be more than enough to amend my soil for the fabric pots
Either way it’s looking like watering day tomorrow. The soil was dry 2" down even in the center this morning. The cilantro almost looks to be wilting a little, so that’s my first sign it’s time soon.
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It took me an hour to get through the permafrost in my bin outside, but the soil underneath it felt so good I had to fill 2 fabric pots full with it. The permafrost layer is behaving like clay when struck. The soil underneath was very loamy for being under so much clay. Maybe I didn’t test in the right location for my soil. Either way here’s the pics
Now I wait to grab the sand tomorrow and I can mix up my soil soon.
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How much sand to soil ratio do I need to fix my soil? @Meesh @MomOnTheRun
They’re 3 gallon fabric pots. 6 gallons of soil overall. I can always fill another pot with the leftover soil
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